Essay on King Lear and a Brave New World: Similar Themes and Motifs

Essay on King Lear and a Brave New World: Similar Themes and Motifs

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In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New world and William Shakespeare's King Lear, the reader will find that both works use similar motifs that mirror each other to increase further the similarities and
significance of the works. The Brave new world tries to destroy any of human emotion, which is why
Huxley has chooses Shakespeare as the basis of John's system of beliefs involved in personal
connection. Although the story lines in both of the publications are quite different from one another,
there is no doubt that there are themes that allow one to create a comparison between the two books.
The most evident motifs in both novels are madness, nonacceptance and the concept of betrayal. that
create an exciting plot and unite the general themes of both novels.

The evident motif that you see in both novels is madness. After giving away all his land to his
two daughters that flattered him with words he wanted to hear, King Lear suffers greatly during the
play because of the cruelties inflicted upon him. Cordelia the only daughter that truly loves him is
disowned, because she chose not to say anything. The two ungrateful daughters contempt and slowly
take away all his powers and strip him of his dignity. After facing this ill treatment by his daughters, he
undergoes a redeeming reversal of character. Lear slowly starts to go mad, Lear. O, let me not be mad,
not mad, sweet heaven!Keep me in temper; I would not be mad! (1.5.44-47). John the savage
encounters the same conflict, when John abandons the Indian reservation to go off to the new world,
he sees that it is nothing like he imagined it to be, John runs away from the this society to a lights
house in which he again is harassed by the residents of the ne...

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...lies relation. The
way Goneril and Regan treated King Lear they way they as the result of jealousy towards Cordelia.
The reason for this might be because Cordelia had always been King Lear's most beloved child and
often favoritism such as this can create exasperation. Cordelia's love for her father never died even
after he abandoned her and even after King Lear proclaimed that she was dead to him. Finding out that
King Lear was in trouble through Kent, Cordelia rushed back to find her father who was left outside
and abandoned. Cordelia had been the recipient of love for her entire life,and since she still loved her
father in return and was sympathetic to his senility, she had the urge to help him. However, since
Gonerial and Reagan did not receive the same love that their sister did, they found that false love and flattery would get what they wanted.

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